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Poke The Box

The latest book, Poke The Box is a call to action about the initiative you're taking - in your job or in your life, and Seth once again breaks the traditional publishing model by releasing it through The Domino Project.

THE DIP BLOG by Seth Godin

All Marketers Are Liars Blog

What's expected

It's expected that you'll tip the masseuse (masseur) at the spa. But not the acupuncturist down the street.

It's expected that the CEO of a public company will hire a hotshot consultant to help her do her job. The CFO gets to do that too. But not the receptionist.

It's expected that coffee in a fancy restaurant will cost more than it does at a cafe.

It's expected that wifi in a business hotel ought to be free. But it didn't used to be that way.

It's expected that the TV in the gym will be on, always. It's expected, though, that you'll wear headphones to listen to Marley.

It's expected that you take a family vacation to Florida. It's not expected, though, to take the kids to Topeka.

It's expected that a child-care facility will run ads with lots of rainbows. A Freudian psychiatrist, on the other hand, is expected not to advertise at all.

Faced with expectations, you've got three really big options:

1. Embrace expectations and build a product or service that fits what people are looking for. No change of behavior necessary. Be in the right place at the right time with the right thing priced appropriately and hope the competition doesn't show up.

2. Change the expectations. No one expected to be able to buy digital music for 99 cents a song and have it show up on their iPod. Now, that's the default expectation in some communities. Changing an expectation builds a huge barrier to those that might follow. Change is time consuming, expensive and rarely happens on schedule.

3. Defy the expectations. Do the unexpected. This is tempting but often leads to nothing but noise.

Before you start marketing something, it helps to be able to describe which combination of the three you're setting out to accomplish.

TrackBack

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» Synchronize Your Communications from ConverStations
To many of us are out of sync in our business communications. Email, voice mail, snail mail, face-to-face, phone calls, memos, post-its, articles, news clippings....and the matter of expectation When I suggest to business people they should subscribe t... [Read More]

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» What's Expected from WebMetricsGuru
Did you ever get the feeling that our reality has a wrapper about it and what you see is that wrapper - what is under it really all depends on how you describe it. Seth Godin has one of those... [Read More]

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» Defying Expectations from Strategy Central
What are you trying to do? Are you really trying to do something beyond the expected? Or is it enough just to be on par with the norm? Hopefully not. Hopefully what we're all trying to do is so surprise [Read More]

» Embrace the unexpected from Expertise Marketplace - Professional Service Firm Marketing Blog
Seth Godin's blog post on embracing the unexpected appeared while my husband John and I were on a one-week driving trip to visit the small towns where our ancestors used to live. It was a very low key and absolutely [Read More]